Paying With the Wave of a Cellphone

holy_calamity writes "Tech Review discusses how it will soon be possible to pay in stores by waving your cellphone over a contactless reader, thanks to new handsets due next year, and RFID stickers and cases offered today by firms including Visa. It's convenient for shoppers, but a major driver of the technology is the opportunity for retailers to gain access to their customers' cellphones and social networks for marketing purposes."

Comments

Yeah, right

[balaband]

Like losing your cellphone wasn't bad enough so far?

and...

[polle404]

And the blackhat standing by the exit door with a 50$ RFID-reader gets my account as well.
They're gonna need some very hefty security measures to get me on that bandwagon, thankyouverymuch!

"but a major driver of the technology is the opportunity for retailers to gain access to their customers' cellphones and social networks for marketing purposes."
Is NOT helping in convincing me.

I don't want a facebook/twitter update of what I bought and where, every time I shop.

Re:and...

[CharmElCheikh]

And the blackhat standing by the exit door with a 50$ RFID-reader gets my account as well.

I work at a company who works on the cellphone side of the thing. It's been part of the specs since the first drafts that transfers require a manual validation (press a button) to occur. Did you really think you were the first to think of that.

Re:and...

[drsmithy]

It's ridiculous what kind of information people will willingly give up for the sake of social networking novelty.

Personally I find the narcissism of social networking *far* more ridiculous than the "giving up information part".

Though I imagine the two are linked - "I know I'm not important enough for anyone to give a shit about me, but maybe if I tell the whole world everything I do, I can pretend they all want to know, and the conclude that I'm actually giving something up by broadcasting everything from what's on TV to the consistency of my stool".

Re:Let's just implant RFID chips in our hands

[TheLink]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm

The night club offers its VIP clients the opportunity to have a syringe-injected microchip implanted in their upper arms that not only gives them special access to VIP lounges, but also acts as a debit account from which they can pay for drinks.

This sort of thing is handy for a beach club where bikinis and board shorts are the uniform and carrying a wallet or purse is really not practical.

Why a cellphone?

[srussia]

My bank already issued me an RFID-fitted credit card... which I don't use.

Re:First call

[mcvos]

I actually do want RFID capability in my phone. But only if that means I can have a built-in RFID Guardian.

But giving retailers access to all my contacts? Why the hell would I want to do that?

Mark of the beast!

[Anonymous Coward]

[13:16] And it maketh all, the small, and the great, and the rich, and the poor, and the freemen, and the servants, that it may give to them a mark upon their right hand or upon their foreheads, [13:17] and that no one may be able to buy, or to sell, except he who is having the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. --Revelations 13:16-17, New Testament (Young's Literal Translation)

I know it's against Slashdot protocol and all to cite religious texts, but if this isn't the prophecy from the Book of Revelation coming true, I don't know what is. I don't know about the rest of you, but the first time they try to inject that thing into my hand, I'm going to cite this religion text and state boldly and unwaveringly that it is against my religion to have an RFID implant. Posted AC because the mere mention of religion here without bashing it poses great risk to karma.

Re:Mark of the beast!

[mikael_j]

It sounds to me that you're implying that the bible quote is somehow an accurate prediction of the future. I'm having a bit of trouble believing in that. Even if it becomes extremely common (which I doubt).

Also, it's a quote from a collection of fairy tales several thousand years old, hardly an accurate prediction of technological progress or world events.

Re:Mark of the beast!

[ultranova]

Please reply to what the GP actually posted. Their bible quote points out that eventually *everyone* will have to have the "mark" to do transactions. There eventually will be no opting out. You're better off not replying if you aren't going to read what the person whote that you are replying directly to.

Let's assume Bible to be inerrant. Let's also assume that this particular quote was meant as a prediction of future events thousands of years away; there's a pretty strong argument that the whole Book of Revelation was written as a thinly-disguised "fuck you" to the Roman Empire, who had a habit of putting their rulers portraits on their money (so you'd have to take the "image of the beast" into your hand to conduct transactions) and requiring worship of said rulers, and had a ruler (Nero) who had just died but was rumored to be alive and about to return, was commonly considered a beast, and who's name can be read as "666" by a common numerological method of the time, but let's ignore all that.

Even with these assumptions, your argument is illogical. There is no reason to assume that RFID tags really are the fulfilment of a particular prophecy, just because they could be. You certainly can't assume that they are, then use that to "disprove" any counterarguments, for that is begging the question. The GP pointed out that RFID tags seem unlikely to go the way the Mark of the Beast is supposed to; that's evidence that RFID tags are not, in fact, Mark of the Beast, not that they are MotB and a miracle will enforce all the conditionals.

This is why religious arguments usually get modded down: even if you assume that said religion is correct, the arguments themselves tend to be one logical fallacy on top of another, and often completely incoherent.

Re:Mark of the beast!

[Culture20]

"the mark if the beast" is an outward sign that one is a follower of "the beast". It's a lot closer to saying "no one can buy or sell without proof of membership in X religion (or political party)."

Re:Old people already use that in Japan

[Luckyo]

Pretty much this. NFC payment via phones has been one of the main reasons why western style smartphones like iphone have been a complete and utter failure in Japan. If you can't even do basic things like pay for your train ticket with a smartphone, then what good is the smart part?

Imagine an iphone that you couldn't send or receive text messages with. Would you buy it? NFC payments are so widespread there that it's in the same general category in Japan.

Re:Let's just implant RFID chips in our hands

[elsJake]

RFID arm band , problem solved and no blood spilled.

Re:Old people already use that in Japan

[coalrestall]

On an average commute (the times where you really get to see what phones everybody are using), I'd say anywhere from a third to half of the phones I see people with are iPhones. It's certainly not a failure here, though if it were to be, it wouldn't be the RFID payment thing (which most people don't use because it's damn near impossible to figure out unless you're the sort of person that regularly posts to Slashdot). It would be because it can't handle websites aimed at Japanese phones, by which I mean the vast majority of websites accessed via a QR code printed somewhere which actually go as far as to completely block access to all but regular phone browsers. These sites are a valuable source of games (very bad ones), discount coupons, postage stamp sized pictures of celebrities that you get to set as your background screen for free, and other such wonders which are fantastically important to the phone buying market.

Re:It already exists

[lingon]

The "no way you can have it done from your pocket" only applies for zero gain antennas. The black hat standing at the exit point, or better yet, in the van some meters away with a high gain parabolic antenna would tend to disagree.

Re:Old people already use that in Japan

[cayenne8]

I didn't even have to finish reading the synopsis here before clearly thinking:

Not A Chance In Hell

Geez...I don't want identifying RFID's on my tires, clothes, credit cards or passports, why the fsck would I want them for my phone and to actively contribute to corporations data stores on me and my habits?

I still prefer good old cash for most transactions.